If there’s one thing I love about New Orleanians, it’s that we’re all hams at heart. Some of us are less obvious about it, though, until Mardi Gras rolls around. The sixty-something moms and dads who play classic rock covers from a float, for example. Or the insurance salesperson who goes home to practice choreography and sew pompons to her uniform.

For all the talk of the New Orleans imaginary—and it is a powerful thing—there is in equal parts a New Orleans backed by the purple, green and gold standard of a sweating, drinking, port-olet-finding human being who decided to exhaust themselves by making this thing called Carnival happen. Carnival, done right, is a part-time job, as well as a love letter to ourselves and a million tourists. It reminds us that we’re all having a fleshly experience, and that experience doesn’t last forever.

During a parade, you move through the city—passing former neighborhoods, friends, exes, people you’ve lost touch with, people you’ve been. The world watches curbside while you put on a show in the streets. I never tire of it, even when I’m super super tired, physically, like now. That’s why I have been parading for 10 years. Let’s take a look back!

2019

Awesome parade season with Sunshine Brass Band We did Krewe d’Etat and Tucks. I hate Tucks’ signature toilet paper rolls. My flag got tangled up in TP soooo many times, ugh.

2018

This parade (Krewe d’Etat) was enchanting. I loved being so close to the flambeaux, even if they did spook the horses and make me feel this close to taking a hoof to the head. We marched with Sunshine Brass Band this year, too.

2017

This was my first year marching with Sunshine Brass Band. I was a mere banner babe–which is a nice, low-commitment way to participate in a parade. You don’t have to learn choreography or go to rehearsals. You literally just show up to the parade and carry a a banner. See me squatting on the right?

2016

I was on the Gris Gris Strut flag corps, led by the fearless Courtney. Our uniforms were pure fiyah that year. Custom-made gold velvet jackets with sequined epaulets. Hell yes. It’s a shame we only wore them for two seasons before this dance troupe disbanded. That’s me on the far right.

2015

The birth of the gold jackets! Another year with Gris Gris Strut, and a very cold parade, as I recall. At one point, I wrapped my flag around me for warmth. I’m second from the left.

2014

Another Gris Gris Strut flag corps year. These uniforms were the cutest and they were all one piece, which made getting dressed easy (peeing less so). This year it POURED during the day parade. (Thoth? I forget.) I remember taking off my boots and dumping water out of them.

2013

This was a year of minimal parading for me–I banner babed one time. I was healing a new thigh tattoo when I did this parade and it was all crusty and tight and nasty. I’m on the left, taking my job very seriously.

2012

This year, I got demoted from dancing with Gris Gris Strut and placed in a fledgling flag corps. None of us knew what we were doing, but we had fun. Our uniforms were leggings and matching tops from Forever 21, lol.

2011

This year, I danced with the 9th Ward Marching Band. It was pretty rad to 1. participate in a Quintron project and 2. march with Proteus, one of the few parading old-line krewes. See me serving face in the middle?

2010

This was my first year dancing in a Mardi Gras parade, and it was Gris Gris Strut’s inaugural season. I sprained my ankle during a rehearsal but marched on it anyway. That’s how bad I wanted to do this parade. I didn’t know then that I had dozens upon dozens of parades to look forward to.

Was going to include all of them but I got lazy and only included tattoos from the waist up. However, this post will still be a useful resource for people who like looking at ink or people who have to identify my body if I get dismembered.

Elayne Angel is one of my continuing tattoo influences. I got pierced in her shop many times in 1998-1999 (you can read my overwritten teenage account of that experience here) and she was a big role model for me. My forearm sleeve definitely owes a debt of gratitude to Alex Binnie, who did Elayne’s sleeves.

Tattoo: Loosely inspired by cast iron balconies in the French Quarter. I love me a good cast iron balcony!

This is a matching tattoo I got with my sister on a trip to Portland; you can read about the experience here. There’s another identical rose on my right shoulder. I didn’t take a picture. Just try to imagine it there.

I have this ongoing desire for a Louisiana-themed tattoo that isn’t a fleur de lis or, like, a second-lining crawfish eating a beignet. So a lot of my tattoos have a Louisiana theme that’s subtle to the point of invisibility, kind of like how our coastline is slowly but inevitably disappearing into the Gulf of Mexico.

This tattoo is an homage to my cats and their mom. You can read more about their miraculous birth here.

Tattoo: Side piece

Location: From below my right knee to below my right shoulder

Artist: There are a bunch of them mashed in there, because this started as a cover-up of a phoenix I got on my hip when I was 18 and morphed into, well, there’s a lot going on. The original artist was a dude named Dusty who tattooed out of a shop on Colfax Avenue in Denver. Then a dude named Micro in Baton Rouge covered that tattoo up with a more colorful version of itself. Then Erica Flannes added another phoenix. Then Henry Rhodes added ANOTHER phoenix and a bunch of flowers and stuff. So now it’s a flock ‘o’ phoenixes, none of which are visible here, really, but like I said…lazy.

Definitely planning on getting more tattoos, though the older I get, the less tolerance I have for pain, especially pain that I invite into my life. Also, the next tattoos I want are kind of…I don’t know, they’ll lower the classiness of my current tattoo situation by at least 10 percent. I really want an ICP tattoo and I really want to tattoo “Fuck You, Pay Me” under a tit. Because why would I ever regret getting a swear word and a gang-affiliated tattoo?

Enjoy this picturesque (but inaccurate) representation of a writer’s tools.

It’s been a year since I went freelance! Overall, this year has been more rewarding (financially and quality of life-wise) than I ever thought possible.

Here’s some work I did this year:

I wrote 45 stories for The New Orleans Advocate. The total is actually even higher, since a few pieces I wrote for the ADORE section don’t show up on the list, and I’m going to file more stories before the year ends.

I became advisor for the Driftwood, the University of New Orleans’ student newspaper. This is a fantastic gig. I love working with students and getting their manicure secrets bestowing them with journo wisdom.

I wrote more content for company blogs, social media accounts and newsletters than I can keep track of.

I did some sponsored content, such as this story for Tales of the Cocktail and this story for Marriott Traveler, as well as one-off pieces for a handful of clients.

Looking over the list, it seems like a lot of writing. And it is. But I haven’t felt stressed or overwhelmed. I actually feel like I’m pretty lazy and have a lot of down time, which is awesome. I’ve been able to pursue hobbies, like pole dancing and music. I recorded and gigged with Shouts and Murmurs at the Mobile Museum of Art in May, and I have a gig upcoming with Sex Party on Dec. 16 at Poor Boys. (We go on at like 2am.)

Anyway, this is a pretty self-congratulatory post, but I am FEELING MYSELF right now. I assumed freelancing would be difficult and I’d be broke and stressed, but it’s been easy and I’m making good money and I’m HAPPY. That’s thanks to my fantastic editors, clients, sources, students, etc.

This is turning into an acceptance speech for an award I both created and bequeathed to myself, but let me just say I am super, super grateful for everyone who supported my writing. And that includes you, for reading this blog.

It’s June 7*, six months since I quit my editor job to become a freelance writer. I’ve learned a lot of stuff so far. Overall, the experience has been great. Here’s what I did today.

I got up at 7 a.m., took a bath and got dressed. I fed the cats their morning snack, washed the dishes, did laundry, swept and mopped the kitchen floor, and made a mango smoothie and green tea. Then I dicked around on the internet until around 9 a.m.

At 9 a.m., I worked for two hours writing Facebook posts for a copywriting client. At 11 a.m., I had a phone interview. Then I ate some leftover vegan mac and cheese and went to Loyola for a voice lesson. My teacher is really awesome. Turns out I’m a soprano, not an alto like I always thought. She said I hadn’t been using all of my voice, and it made me wonder if there are other areas of my life where that’s true, metaphorically speaking.

2 p.m. I got home and did three interviews, two for a client blog posts and one for an Advocate story. I also took a nap and played piano. Working on a Schubert impromptu right now. I finished the interviews a little after 5.

At 5:30 p.m., I worked on my novel. The last few days I’ve been outlining it using Scrivener. I just started working with the program and it’s proving useful for large structural revisions. I like being able to move around giant chunks of text. Today I wrote a new scene that might not make it into the novel at all. It was 852 words and it went well. I was pleased because it’s been a while since I wrote fiction.

Then I wrote this post. Now it’s 6:56 p.m. and Bryan and I are going to get a beer at this brewery that just opened nearby and then make dinner.

I can’t believe how much freelancing suits me. My biggest challenge is not dicking around on the internet. I could seriously knock my work out by like 3 p.m. each day and then just hang out or go to the country club or whatever if I just didn’t dick around on the internet for hours. Financially, everything is extremely stable.

I have a more intimate relationship with my craft now. Before, writing was sandwiched between commutes, and it happened in spurts between staff meetings, Rouses runs and water cooler bullshitting (yes, we really had a water cooler, and I really bullshat there). Now, I sit at the kitchen counter, open my laptop, words come out, and by some trick of late capitalism and undeserved luck, those words turn into dollars.

I often asked freelancers for advice when I was a nine-to-fiver. They always told me to go for it, that it was the greatest choice they’d ever made. So far, that feels true, but I also see the pointlessness of giving advice.

My freelance career is unique to me. Riddled with whorls and lifelines, its trajectory is as complex and winding as the inside of my hand.

*I wrote this 10 days ago but just got around to editing and posting it today.

Last month, Claude went missing. He’s an inside cat(born under my couch) who’s never left the house except for vet visits. It’s hard to overstate the gradual escalation of panic that unfolds as you realize yes, your cat is really gone.

“Hmm, I haven’t seen Claude all morning” becomes “Maybe he’s hiding” becomes “Maybe I should shake a bowl of food to flush him out” becomes “He isn’t in the house, not anywhere.” Then you’re barefoot on the sidewalk, yelling his name again and again into the annihilating pastel dome of a springtime sky.

And he is nowhere and everywhere — under the house, in the gutter, in a crawlspace, trapped in a garage — all at once.

Every other cat that crosses your path seems to be a black one, which is unlucky. Or is it lucky? It depends on the culture, Egyptian or German. But today, who can tell?

So you accept that this is happening, cry and Google “how to find a lost cat.” In response to the internet advice of countless cat ladies and gentlemen, you…

Take walks at 5 a.m. shaking a bowl of food and calling his name while barefoot, hoping the scent of your feet lures him back home, even though a lot of sites say you shouldn’t do that.

A day goes by. Two. Three. Your humane trap nets five cats, but none are Claude. Soon, the cats wise up and stop taking the bait. You make flyers and post them at every intersection. You talk to your neighbors, baristas, pizza delivery drivers, librarians. They say they will keep an eye out. But you know that’s a lie, because you never keep an eye out when you see a flyer for a lost cat. Claude is just one among so many missing; who can keep track? And he’s black, like a million other cats in Bywater.

Meanwhile, Roland (Claude’s brother and best friend) gallops up and down the hall alone. Claude used to chase him; they’d wrestle on the living room’s wooden floor. Finally, they’d groom each other and curl up in a cat yin-yang. Now Roland just sleeps and eats. He’s stopped climbing onto your lap in the morning.

Claude and Roland’s preferred sleeping arrangement.

Claude is not among the cats at the shelter, though an employee does give you a lead: a woman who monitors the neighborhood’s feral cat colonies. You email her for addresses.

She promptly replies with four colony addresses and a note about the number of caretakers (e.g., 700 block Independence, 2 caretakers). And less heartening news:

We were scheduled to do some trapping on the 500 block of Alvar a few weeks ago for TNR and when we went for that trapping the person who called us said he had not seen the cats in about a week. I am wondering if someone is removing cats and dropping them in another neighborhood. I know that is not the news you want, but I would try to place flyers in an expanded area around your home.”

You double down on your flyering, paying the extra 60 cents for each color copy. It’s been a week. Strange numbers light up your phone. The clusters of texts and calls come in the morning and evening, as people spot the same cat or group of cats sprawled on cracked sidewalks, lounging on shotgun house porches, dozing under rust-gnawed pickup trucks. It’s a bit like hunting a rare Pokemon, each time you investigate a black cat sighting.

But it is never, ever Claude.

Nine days go by. Your friend Cari, who is psychic, shares a spell with you. She says to cut a string the length of your dining room table’s circumference, attach it to a photo of Claude, light a candle in the center of the table and stare into its flame while visualizing Claude coming home and pulling the photo toward you. Finally, wrap the photo in the string and put it under your pillow. She also advises upping the reward to $100.

You sleep with a picture of Claude wrapped in red nylon cord.

Your friends Adriane and Andrew stay with you for a week, because they are back in town for their wedding. They have cats, too. They understand your loss. At the same time, this is a happy week, and you don’t feel Claude’s absence as keenly.

A stranger calls with a cat tip while you are at Bacchanal drinking red wine, but he is obviously a weirdo who just wants the $100. Also, the cat he found has a patch of white. Claude is pure black.

Your parents tell you they are praying, and you are praying, too. A tiny miracle brought Claude to you. Perhaps by some tiny miracle, he will return.

You cruise Petfinder, wondering if Roland could handle an adopted sibling. You remember how glorious it was to have two black cats who are brothers. One black cat is banal, but two black cats are enchanting, like a cheesy poster for jazz music come to life, and there’s a keyboard in it somewhere.

Because Roland has anxiety and bladder issues, you reconcile yourself to being a one-cat household for the next decade or so. Roland is adjusting pretty well to being an only cat. But you know how bad his memory is — he sometimes didn’t recognize Claude after a trip to the vet— and wonder, Did you simply forget, Roland, how you’re suffering?

Eighteen days pass.

Your phone rings while you’re working on a piece for Marriott Traveler. It’s Elizabeth, your neighbor, calling with a lead.

“Can you go investigate a potential Claude?” you ask Bryan. “I’m on deadline.”

Later, Andrew says you threw your laptop when you got up. You can’t imagine you’d throw something so expensive, but maybe; you were excited, definitely. But you’re also guarded. You know how many false Claudes are out there.

Elizabeth texted this photo and asked, “Is this him?”

The black cat is a block away, in an overgrown backyard at Pauline and Chartres streets. He might be Claude. You’ve learned to disqualify black cats the way slush pile readers reject manuscripts: quickly, by noting incorrectness. This one’s ear is torn. This one’s a little too big and his eyes are amber instead of green. This one still has his balls.

Nothing disqualifies this potential Claude. He isn’t running, the way the ferals did. He is gobbling tuna from the can Bryan brought while making crazed grunting sounds. He is letting you pick him up and hold him like a baby. He is going willingly into his carrier.

He is home, and he is slamming his face into your hand so you’ll pet him harder, rearing up on his hind legs, meowing a ragged, more desperate meow than you’ve ever heard him make. You feel his hips and jagged spine through his fur, which is alive with fleas.

You’re 99 percent sure it’s Claude. He’s changed, though. You make an appointment with the vet, who administers shots and flea medicine, then scans the microchip like a grocery store clerk ringing up a banana.

It’s now been two months since my last day at a full-time job and things are going well. I thought I’d talk about my cash flow, work sources, health insurance and other stuff so that people want to become freelance writers can see how it works for one person.

My income is steady. Amazingly, my bank account hasn’t dipped over the course of these two months. I think that’s partly because I had overdue paychecks that finally came through in January. I did have a few big expenses–mostly my Obamacare (more on that later). I’m making around $500 to $700 a week freelancing, based on almost the same mix of clients/editors/assignments I described inthis post.

I lost one major gig. Sadly, Thrillist axed their health vertical last week. Which means ones of my steady gigs is gone pecan. It sucks; I loved the assignments, the consistency, the pay and my editor. I got to cover things that I think are important, like thedrug war, PTSD in doctorsand thecholesterol scam. When my editor broke the news (gently, in a compliment-laced email), he wrote, “Nobody really expected our section to have as much success as it did, and a lot of that is thanks to you. The subject matter we were able to slip onto a burgers and booze site was tremendous.”

But I got an awesome new gig. But, as my mom likes to say, when God closes a door, he opens a window (or another door, I forget which). I have a new gig freelancing for The New Orleans Advocate, which is super awesome. I’m contributingfeatures to Tuesday’s eat.play.live section, and I have a couple upcoming pieces in ADORE, The Advocate’s shopping section. I love the assignments, and my editors are great.

I’m still financing my freelance life with Airbnb. This month I’ll make a little over $1,000 from renting out the extra bedroom. That’s more than most months, because of Mardi Gras. Overall, Airbnb has slowed down since we started in 2014, but between it and Bryan’s rent, I still make enough to cover my mortgage.

I got Obamacare. Health insurance concerned me prior to going freelance, and actually, it still does, because nobody really knows what’s going to happen to it under this administration. I pay $280 a month for the “bronze” level, which is basically one step up from Medicaid. It’s Humana, like my old insurance, but it’s a different network. I have been to the doctor A LOT this past month, because I have two autoimmune diseases. One of them, Hashimoto’s, required bloodwork, because my previous doctor had been tinkering with my dosing. Long story short: my new Obamacare doctor IS AWESOME. He’s a just a few blocks from my house. I can call and often get a same-day appointment.. He is extremely thorough. And best of all, he prescribed me the medication I’d been trying to get, which my previous doctor wouldn’t prescribe. She said I had to see an endocrinologist, and he had a three month wait, and…anyway, you get the picture. Also, my medications are affordable and I can pick them up up Walmart or CVS. Obamacare rocks.

I’m mostly working from home. I had considered renting a co-working space or working from coffee shops, but after a couple months, I can say I’m adequately productive working from home. Added bonuses: it’s free; there’s a kitchen full of snacks and tea; I’m around to get deliveries before they’re stolen off the porch; cats. I avoid becoming a shut-in by taking walks and going to the gym. Also, Lianna Patchand I co-worked once; it was delightful and productive AND she shared her cake with me. Definitely doing that again. I plan to attend some freelancer meet-up groups from time to time.

So, those are the major updates. The coolest thing about freelancing is that I feel like I don’t have a job, but I still get money. Also, Mondays no longer suck, but Fridays are still awesome.

People who read this blog regularly know I love making, discussing, reviewing and upholding New Year’s resolutions. Chalk it up to my sun in Capricorn. This year, though, I’ve been a lot more mellow about goals. Switching to freelance has been such a shock to my system (in a good way) that I didn’t make a list of resolutions and don’t plan to. My biggest goal this year is to adjust to a major life change.

I did make the quintessential New Year’s resolution move by joining a gym the first week of January. It’s a gym near my house that I had been eyeballing for a while, but I couldn’t justify the $50 a month fee. That’s so much money. (I’m a tightwad.) However, I rationalized that the $600 a year would be worth it, because it not only buys access to a gym, it also gives me a place to hide when Airbnbers are getting on my nerves, and basically an extra bathroom. If there’s ever a time crunch and I urgently need to poop or shower while an Airbnber is camped out in my bathroom, I can just go to the gym! (You don’t want to know how many times I’ve peed in my backyard. Often enough that it’s not a big deal, that is, not gym-worthy.)

Anyway, turns out that I LOVE GOING TO THE GYM. I love that it’s bare-bones–there’s no pool, no sauna, no group aerobics classes. Just serious equipment for serious gym fiends. WHICH I NOW AM. I love how easy it is to tack on a weights session after my run–I pass the gym anyway, on my way home, so stopping in and pumping some iron is easy to integrate into my existing routine. If it’s freezing or sweltering or pouring outside, I can just run on a treadmill! Lifting weights really takes a runner’s high to the next level, btw.

Also, there’s just something sexy about this gym. I don’t know how else to say it. I’ve never been in a gym so predominately peopled with young, good-looking people who are working out really hard. Bywater has a young median age– I read 36 somewhere*?–so it makes sense that those hard-bodied Millennials are getting their cardio and resistance training in somewhere between their coffee shop co-working sessions and gallery hopping. This is where. I figured there must be missed connections flying all over the place on Craiglist for this gym, so I checked, but there were only two in the M4M section. I expected more than that, but I guess it just reiterates that this place is for SERIOUS WORKOUT FIENDS. Not cruising.

Oh yeah, and the guy who signed me up REMEMBERED MY NAME and greets me when he sees me. And also, it’s fun to work out in the middle of the day, when I need a break from staring at my laptop and feel a little stir-crazy. I could go on and on about how great this gym is.

Bottom line–I’m glad I joined the gym. It suits my new lifestyle. Which also is great.

My last day working a full-time job was Dec. 16. I mostly approached that day with trepidation. But after my first weeks of self-employment, I’m surprised by how well it suits me. Here are some other things I didn’t see coming.

People tell me I seem happier.

Since last May, I’d been working 9-to-5 while also building my freelance business. Deadlines and stress galore–and it wasn’t just affecting me. Bryan said I’ve been pissy, rude and unpleasant for the last few months. It was so bad that he asked friends for advice on how to deal with it, and had nightmares about me never quitting the 9-to-5. On the first Monday that I didn’t go to the office, he and our friend Andrew both commented on how much happier I seemed. Which was surprising, because I didn’t realize what a toll overworking was taking on me or the people I care about.

I am far likelier to make plans with friends.

When I worked at an office, I craved time at home with my cats. I could sometimes carve out a quick coffee run with a friend during a lunch break, but usually I was too tired after a whole day at work to do much more than cook dinner, drink and watch Bojack Horseman when I got home. Now, I really enjoy excuses to get out of the house and catch up with people. I’m becoming way more social, and it feels great to spend a couple hours in a coffee shop or swimming at the Country Club on a weekday.

I got another gig.

One of my big fears was that all my freelance work would dry up the second I handed in my notice. This is kind of obviously irrational. In fact, not one but two editors contacted me last week congratulating me on taking the leap to freelance and asking if I’d like to do some work for them. The answer was a resounding HELL YES. One of the most unexpected things about a meeting I had with an editor last week: when she mentioned the writing of mine she most admired, it wasn’t a sparkly portfolio piece or anything I’d done for national outlets, stuff that I would THINK is the most impressive. It was the personal, day-to-day stuff that I’d shared here, on my blog. Which is surprising but also awesome.

I learned the tough lesson of invoicing.

Invoicing is one of the banes of my freelance existence. I have been pretty lax about it, because I didn’t depend on the income while I had a full-time gig. Also, I was so slammed that invoicing was very low on my priority list. One of my clients hadn’t been invoiced since SEPTEMBER (!!!), and when I went through deposits and invoices for another, I found that there was a huge discrepancy between what I’d billed and what I was owed. As in, I had only gotten half of the money I’d invoiced for since August. Yikes. This is not something I ever had to deal with as a full-time employee. More than ever, I appreciate the clients who may not pay a ton of money, but who pay on TIME.

I don’t miss the office environment at all.

During my last days at Gambit, I’d find myself bullshitting in editorial meetings with smart, funny writers or listening to graphic designers rip the page proofs off the walls after the book was put to bed on Friday evenings and thinking, “Man, I’m really going to miss this.” But I don’t. I don’t miss anything about the environment. I don’t miss the structure that it brought to my life. I don’t miss having to stay until 5:30 or 6 p.m., even if my work was done before then. I do miss the people, though, and I miss my computer, which is better than the one I have now.

The biggest surprise:

Last week, I spent the night at my grandmother’s house in Baton Rouge with my sister Laura, who came down from Memphis for a visit. Her boyfriend showed up, which was unexpected–we thought he was still up there dog-sitting. But no, he’d decided to buy a ring, rent a car, drive down and pop the question. He figured Laura and my grandmother would be the only ones to see him drop to one knee. He did not expect me to be there at 4 p.m. on a Tuesday.

This is a common area in my house, which I sometimes wish I could fence off, but it’s adjacent to the kitchen, and guests like having a fridge.

When one of my friends started hosting on Airbnb, I asked her what it was like. “You do a lot of laundry,” she said, which was maybe the MOST obvious thing about hosting.

Anyway, I registered my spare bedroom on the site in 2014 and almost immediately had a steady flow of travelers passing through. That year, the room was booked 291 nights. I could tell you how much laundry I did (a lot), how much money I earned (about $24,000 that I split with Bryan) or how many people had loud sex with the door open (two). But I think the most important thing to know if you’re thinking about opening your home to hundreds of strangers is what the mental repercussions are when you open your home to hundreds of strangers.

Especially if you’re not particularly outgoing, like me.

I also asked Bryan and my sister about hosting. They both came to Airbnb with couchsurfing experience under their belts. Bryan is an extrovert who would keep the house full of friends every day if he could, and he worked from home a lot over the past few years. Laura’s an extrovert who doesn’t care as much about meeting strangers as she does about seeing her friends, and she works a pretty demanding 9-to-5 job at a charter school.

Here is how hosting affected each of us.

How it affects day-to-day life in your house

“I focus on guests having privacy. When people are around, I want to make sure my dog doesn’t bark, that when I am walking, I am tiptoeing. Because I want them to be well-rested and comfortable, I am hyper-vigilant about the noise I am creating. And that can get very tiring.” –Laura

“I make a lot less noise and feel kind of bad if I’m making it. I try to figure out if they’re home or not before practicing guitar. Sometimes I’m wrong.” — Bryan

For me, it’s hard balancing cleanliness with quietness. I used to clean in the mornings before going to work, but usually, guests were asleep at that time. So I’d try to quietly unload the dishwasher, quietly scoop out the litterbox, quietly empty the trash. Which is a really tough balancing act.

The most annoying part about sharing your space with strangers

“When I feel like my space is not being respected. I respect their space, but it feels like they have free reign over mine. Some guests feel too comfortable, and as a host, you feel very isolated, like you have to stay in your room if you want alone time.” –Laura

“Some people talk a lot. Sometimes, it’s great. But sometimes it’s annoying because you don’t feel like telling them about the best New Orleans food or what Hurricane Katrina was like. The way our house is set up, it’s very difficult for us to get away from them, but not difficult for them to get to get away from us. So the hanging out happens on their terms.” –Bryan

Tips for dealing with annoyances

“Set up an alternative living space in your bedroom or outside. Feel free to have rooms the guests can’t go in. We have three bedrooms, and one I have set up as an alternate work area, so I can be private. I don’t put pictures of that space on Airbnb, sothey don’t think it is part of the house.” –Laura

“You can take a few days off whenever you want. I can go in my little other room to get away from them. We have left the house a couple times. Sometime, I have to say, ‘OK, they’re paying me, I’m leaving, it’s fine. That doesn’t happen that often.” –Bryan

What should people expect going in to hosting?

“It’s easy to think people are annoying, because you have a lot of perfect guests. Every once in a while, you get someone who is demanding or awkward or unpleasant, and that’s when you need to remember that people are paying you for a service.” –Laura

“The range of emotions is high. Sometimes you are frustrated and pissed, and you’re like, “I’ll never do it again.” Other times, it’s awesome, because you’re like, ‘I can’t believe I’m getting paid to hang out with these great people.'” –Bryan

Get used to meeting strangers when they’re in their underwear and pajamas. This has happened so many times that it’s normal to me now. Guests seem embarrassed, but they’re the ones walking around with no pants, so who’s really to blame?

I try to make my blog posts useful, entertaining and mostly positive. Today’s will not be one of these posts. This post involves literary lies, thievery and subterfuge. It also is the story of how my novel came to be unpublished.

The gist is this: Torquere Press acquired my novel in fall 2014. Shortly thereafter, the press was sold to new owners. I was like, “Cool, maybe they’ll bring some good changes.” An LGBT press, Torquere had been around since 2003, one big reason I chose to sign with them. Everyone had good things to say about Torquere. They assigned me an editor, handled the cover, did a small amount of marketing and released the book in summer 2015. I held up my end, promotion-wise. I did talks at libraries, signings, that kind of stuff. So it was pretty disappointing when my royalty check was only $60. I really thought the book had sold more copies. The next quarter, my check was $20. After that, I didn’t get any royalty checks at all.

I figured, well, my book is a flop. Critically, it got no traction. Craft-wise, it was the best I could do at the time, but I knew the book was flawed and hoped my subsequent work would be better. And financially, I didn’t recoup the money I put into booze for the book party, promo copies, Goodreads giveaways and targeted Amazon ads. I felt like I had failed at every level.

Soon I heard rumblings of discontent. My fellow authors weren’t getting paid, they said in our private email chain. Last summer, one of Torquere’s co-owners went to jail for writing hot checks to authors (the item ishere–-her first name is Kristi).More and more and moreauthors reported bounced checks and nonpayment, requesting their rights back only to be stonewalled. Meanwhile, Torquere kept signing new contracts and participating inTwitter pitch contests.

Yesterday, Torquere owners Kristi and Joanna sent an email to all their authors saying the press was closing. There’s a post about it onWriters Beware, though Torquere has not yet gone public on their pages. I’m getting my rights back to the novel eventually (within 90 days, they claim). But as far as getting paid, I’m not holding my breath, and neither is anyone else. I feel especially sorry for the editors who are owed thousands of dollars.

One of the shitty things about crime is, when it happens to me, I wonder, “How did I invite this into my life?” And when it’s the petty crime that’s so common in New Orleans, the answers are simple: I left valuables in plain sight in my car. I didn’t lock the deadbolt. That kind of thing. Victim-blaming is never the right way to go, but it’s the mentality I revert to when I’m a crime victim. I feel stupid, ashamed and embarrassed—I should have prevented this! I should have known better!

When crime happens in the literary realm—which is a new one for me—the psychic ramifications are still there, but they’re a lot more troubling. Self-defeating stuff like: if I was capable of writing a decent book that got picked up by a decent agent and a decent press, this wouldn’t have happened.

On the silver lining side: if and when I publish my next book, I might get a second chance to be a debut author. I don’t think I lost that much money. And I learned something—I think. That thing is to get out of my own way. When I submitted this novel to small presses, Torquere’s was the first offer I got. I committed a cardinal sin, which was to accept the offer without revisiting every press I had subbed to first. I really didn’t think anyone else would want to publish my weird, flawed book. Three offers rolled in after Torquere’s, one from Evernight Teen, which is a much bigger small press, with owners who have yet to be incarcerated for stealing from their authors. I regret not giving myself the chance to take their offer. But I’ve learned not to put myself in that position again.

Right now, I’m deciding whether I want to forget this book ever happened or try to re-home it with another publisher. I’m leaning toward the former, because my energy is focused on my next book. But I don’t have to choose right now. After all, I still don’t have my rights back.